Eva
Newton made our natural world absolute and mathematical. He's the point at which Physics and Philosophy split paths. Suddenly the world was deterministic, they could predict solar eclipses and the path of comets. Gods, myths and the unknown had to retreat.
A fascinating biography of the man who triggered that monumental change. Who had to grapple new concepts and assign words to novel phenomena (gravity!). A scholar who equally dabbled in natural sciences yet also was obsessed with alchemy and religion. A shut-in who discovered optics and the laws of motion, yet kept that knowledge to himself, refusing to publish because he liked nothing less than dispute with scientists of opposing believes. And yet he quarreled a lot, with Robert Hooke, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Newton came out on top, and even ended his life quite wealthy, minting coins for the King, and presiding over the The Royal Society.
Hard to imagine that any future scientific discovery would ever have such a monumental effect over our world views again. And if yes, it'll be scary.
About an exuberant little girl that sometimes loves and feels so much, that she can't help but bite and destroy. A brave little girl that goes to battle against a field of nettles without caring about being wounded. A daydreaming little girl that befriends trees and cold mossy rocks and lonely chickens. A stubborn little girl that is haunted by dark shadows yet is brave enough to never back down. A short-tempered little girl that constantly argues with her mother, yet secretly craves nothing more than her mother's cheek against hers. An imaginative little girl that is so good at inventing fantasy world, that her little brother lives in a world of tigers. A precocious little girl that wants nothing more than to stay in her cocoon of a childhood longer, yet slowly grows to realize that change is inevitable.
A super immersive, delicate and quite funny look at childhood in a Mountain village in the 1920s in Austria. Another wonderful novel by Marlen Haushofer. Little Meta is quite something.
The pandemic did a great job of reminding everyone again how lowly valued all the care-work is that falls onto women. In this novel a family loses a mother, and a friend and a daughter try to fill the gap. Because they want to, because they need to, because no man would ever do so. While they grapple with grief and anger at the sudden suicide, a deeper anger emerges, at society's misogyny, at the failure of the previous generations. Anger bubbles up, becomes raging activism and rebellion in the teenage daughter, while the friend slowly unwinds herself from what her world has taught her to accept. This was a really good listen. Sometimes too on the nose (the father being a total schmuck) but hey, it is what it is. Lola's gang, with their methological approach, sometimes reminded me of the [b:GRM: Brainfuck 43465986 GRM Brainfuck Sibylle Berg https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546646384l/43465986.SY75.jpg 67587992] kids. Merged review:The pandemic did a great job of reminding everyone again how lowly valued all the care-work is that falls onto women. In this novel a family loses a mother, and a friend and a daughter try to fill the gap. Because they want to, because they need to, because no man would ever do so. While they grapple with grief and anger at the sudden suicide, a deeper anger emerges, at society's misogyny, at the failure of the previous generations. Anger bubbles up, becomes raging activism and rebellion in the teenage daughter, while the friend slowly unwinds herself from what her world has taught her to accept. This was a really good listen. Sometimes too on the nose (the father being a total schmuck) but hey, it is what it is. Lola's gang, with their methological approach, sometimes reminded me of the [b:GRM: Brainfuck 43465986 GRM Brainfuck Sibylle Berg https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546646384l/43465986.SY75.jpg 67587992] kids.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is such popcorn literature. While I really connected with [b:Daisy Jones & The Six 40597810 Daisy Jones & The Six Taylor Jenkins Reid https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580255154l/40597810.SY75.jpg 61127102], this one and [b:Malibu Rising 55404546 Malibu Rising Taylor Jenkins Reid https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618293107l/55404546.SY75.jpg 74581401] felt a bit too superficial. Yet they are glossy and fun reads, and I will probalby read her upcoming one too. I don't quite know yet how I feel about the fact that she creates a big universe where the characters of her novels occasionally overlap.
La couverture du livre promet l'enfant sauvage Zazie, et vous obtenez ca. Elle jure tout le temps, ne suit pas les regles et est prete a se lancer dans n'importe quelle aventure. Ce a quoi je ne m'attendais pas, c'est que le monde parisien dans laquelle Zazie se lance, devient de plus en plus absurdist et bizarre, presque surrealiste, avec des nuances tres sombres.
C'etait un aventure pour moi aussi a lire ce texte qui utilise l'argot parisien et epelle phonetiquement de nombreux mots. C'etait drole et moins difficile que anticipe - oui meussieu.
J'aime que Laverdure et Turandot ont change de role a la fin :)
- Tu causes, tu causes, c'est tout ce que tu sais faire.
My second Keun. This one's a portrait of pre-WWII German society, seen through the eyes of 19-year old Sanna, who struggles in this new world where neighbors denounce neighbors, colleagues denounce colleagues, aunts denounce nieces. Set in 1936, published by Keun in exile in 1937, and yet it reads like a novel that's been written after WWII, with so much hindsight.
As before, Keun writes with so much wit and charm, an again, the German audiobook is exceptionally narrated by Camilla Renschke.
Another summer-story coming-of-age tale, sun-drenched, feverish and filled with imagery of hallucinatory Mediterranean nature. This one is set in 1936 Mallorca, at the beginning of the Spanish civil war. While [b:Three Summers 41774605 Three Summers Margarita Liberaki https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1561080034l/41774605.SY75.jpg 6547901] had a levity to it, The Island is slightly suffocating, as the narration flits around the complicated family and power dynamics on the island, keeping us - and the protagonist - in the dark, and therefore somewhat paralyzed.
Recently rereleased, this 1956 relic paints a melancholy picture of after-war Austria. An old decaying castle stands in as metaphor for the formerly grand Habsburg empire. The once-expensive interior crumbles from water damage, the ceiling is falling in, the parcs are overrun by wild and damp nature. The owners don't have the funds to renovate, yet a young literature hotshot in love with the heiress wants to transform the castle into a centre for culture. A love story and drama ensues, while the wish for renewal fights against the natural process of decay.
High on nature and ghosts of the past, the novel spirits you away into a foggy and cold forrest, a swamp land with leaking boats and moss-covered stone sculptures. The participants play dress-up with the decomposing garments of the past and the modern wear of the future. Nothing quite fits. Yet while the moss covers all, the stone underneath still remains.
Wonderful. Three summers, with three greek goddesses incarnated in three sisters. Maria, Infantia, Katerina. One is allure and chooses submission, one is beauty but shows too much strength, one is wilderness and sleeps with the forrest nymphs. We follow along with their magical sister bond, their love stories, their mother's secret, their Hungarian grandma, their neighbors troubles, all throughout three summers in a sun-drenched and idyllic suburb of Athens. Has a timeless quality.
A story of three neighboring families, how they are tangled up in each other and how a tragedy has lasting repercussions. First I was really confused about who belongs to which family, then I wasn't that into the magical realism aspect of the novel, and ultimately I got a bit fed up with how these characters treated each other. Not nearly as good as [b:Abigail 43452825 Abigail Magda Szabó https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579715045l/43452825.SY75.jpg 1845425] or [b:The Door 497499 The Door Magda Szabó https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175252169l/497499.SY75.jpg 485644]. Still, somewhere in the middle, I was engaged.
Fantastic engineering tale. I love this genre.
About the high-stress adventure of building airplanes, learning about radar-absorbing coatings, experimenting with perfect stealth geometries, about going on overnight flights at high altitude across Russia. About how making timely decisions even if they turn out wrong is better than to delay decisions. About having your designers sit right next to your machinists. About prototyping. About using off-the-shelf components. About keeping your teams small.
Kelly Johnson's 14 Skunk Works Rules1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.8. The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don't duplicate so much inspection.9. The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.10. The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.12. There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor, the very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.
In a future with mind-reading-espionage and anti-psychics counter-businesses, this starts out as a more typical scifi corporate thriller, in a nonetheless intriguing future where capitalism rules and simple household machines are coin-operated. But then a bomb explodes, and slowly reality seems to crumble. We're in a dream-like world, and usually I find this rather frustrating, when narrative control and in-world-physics seems to slip away together, but Dick does a good job at being as rigid and descriptive and so manages to keep you grounded. And even when it all turned out to be a "oh actually, they are all dead and living in a virtual after-life of sorts" reveal, I didn't mind, even though I usually hate these turns. I think it was setup well.Deserving of being a classic. [b:The Lathe of Heaven 59924 The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433084322l/59924.SX50.jpg 425872] is a good spiritual cousin I'd say.
A woman dies, and a husband remains with a promise, that gets passed on throughout the decades, while South Africa experiences violent and revolutionary changes. The family slowly crumbles, and the unkept promise is the bad taste that remains.
And not even when it's finally kept, you get much satisfaction from it, as it's too little too late.
There's nothing more inspiring than reading about people who are leading fulfilling creative life. Hitting that balance between playful spontaneity and dedicated discipline, between openness and closed-ness, that allows them to innovate in whatever domain they're at home.
Csikszentmihalyi takes a system's view on creativity, demonstrating how besides an individual's personal characteristics, the patterns and rules of their domains, the gatekeepers of their fields, are equally important to foster creativity. How could we create a world where everyone has the freedom from worries and the opportunities, to cultivate their creative spirits. Innovation is what ultimately improves all our lives, yet also the act of innovation - of being creative while in a state of flow - is what fulfills one's life.
I've been going through this book slowly, a few pages at a time, to savor every little inspiration some of the interviews or insights might bring.
Mon deuxieme excursion en Lorraine en France avec Nicolas Mathieu. Apres [b:Leurs enfants après eux 41070908 Leurs enfants après eux Nicolas Mathieu https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533728939l/41070908.SY75.jpg 64156450] les protagonistes ici ont grandi, ils ont quarant ans, ils ont des familles, des boulots, des responsabilites. Mais surtout ils ont de nombreux moments de leur vie passee sur lesquels ils peuvent se retourner pour remettre en question leurs decisions. Le roman est une histoire de vie en province, une histoire de ceux qui rester, et ceux qui retourner. Helene et Christophe se recontrent en passant au lycee en province. Elle est parti au grande ville avec ses ambitions et ses talents, devenant une consultante dans un environment d'affaires a haut stress. Il est reste, attache a ses reves d'adolescence de devenir une star du hockey sur glace, qui ne sont jamais devenus realite. Quand ils se retrouvent deux decennies plus tard, Helene est retourne avec sa famille, apres un burn-out au travail. Christophe vit avec son fils chez son pere, apres la separation avec son femme. Ils commencent une affaire qui est secrete, parce que leurs deux vies sont tres differentes. J'aime lire Mathieu. Il sait deterrer les emotions et les dilemmes psychologiques de ses personnages. Il y a toujours une certain melancolie dans ses histoires. Une melancolie pour les reves des jeunes. Une nostalgie pour des temps plus simples, et des emotions plus simples.
Such a disappointement after only haven't read and loved one VanderMeer before: book[b:Annihilation 17934530 Annihilation Jeff VanderMeer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403941587l/17934530.SX50.jpg 24946895]. This one's a mystery that is too unnecessarily mysterious and tangled, and very unappealing, as the protagonist is too paranoid and manic and really doesn't explain well why she let herself be pulled into this mystery in the first place. What a waste of a perfect cover and title.